Dalton
by cuter-than-a-guinea-pig
Summary: The five times Blaine never wanted to see Dalton again and the one time he truly never would.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So, yeah, 5 and 1. never done one of these before but i've always wanted to. chapters should be about this length. There will be 6 (obviously) and updates will be once a week.**

**And as always, hope you enjoy :)**

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**#1. First Day  
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Blaine yawned as he looked out the window and at the sprawling houses set back from the winding road behind rod iron gates and tall hedges. It had been weeks now since he had been up this early and he hadn't slept well.

"You're awfully quiet," his mother said, glancing over at him from the driver's seat.

Blaine just shrugged, squinting as the rising sun beamed past the pink petal of the tree lined street. Quiet was a relative term. There had been little thing over the years, like his father's business dinners or country club lunches that highlighted this. They were filled with vapid talk of politics amounting to nothing more than following the money or passive aggressive showboating. With nothing of substance, growing up, Blaine had found them deafening.

It wasn't until the hospital though that this notion truly hit hard. Day after day for two weeks he laid in that lumpy, too small bed numb to the world around him. Nurses bustled in and around, their shoes clacking across the greying linoleum floor in time to the beeping of various machines. It was as if they had become part of the electronic beast itself. But Blaine could never descend from the hallowed glare of the humming fluorescent lights off the white white walls. He was trapped. His body could not defend itself that night so his mind was doing it then, barricading itself within sound proof walls so strong they blocked out even his own thought.

He hadn't really minded at the time. He didn't care to talk to the nurses or doctors. They couldn't help, not really. And he didn't care to listen to the pitying speeches from his parents, the: 'we told you not to go with him's, 'what exactly did you think would happens's, 'you might need to tone it down's'. Buried somewhere in there though must have been something about a new school.

The new school had uniforms apparently and even before the first day had started Blaine found the tie around his neck to be more like a noose. It didn't fit like his bowties. The tie wasn't nearly as bad as his mother's constant comments though. "You nervous? Don't be. The campus looked gorgeous." Because freshly mowed, green grass was the cure to all humiliation.

The quiet comment really got him though. The numbness had faded now and his head hadn't stopped. Sleepless nights plagued him, his mind racing too hard to rest. The flash backs came along with the 'what if's' and the shame and guilt that he couldn't defend himself or his date. And everyone knew. That was the worst part. The student body left prom that night to ambulances lights and he'd cards on his bedside table from Cooper and his grandparents. There was no escape now that the quiet was gone.

The noose tightened as his mother pulled up the drive way to the Victorian looking building and further still when she interrupted a pickup game of touch football on the front lawn to ask for directions. With their dress shirt sleeves rolled up and their ties tied around their biceps or foreheads, they looked more like savage cave men than school boys. No matter how politely they answered his mother, Blaine could help but think Lord of the Flies.

He allowed himself to be led across the grounds and into the head master's office, looking over his shoulder with every step.

"Well, looks like everything is in order. You ready for a tour? Wes, one of our juniors, will show you around," the head master asked.

"He certainly is," his mother answered for him.

"You are a quiet one then? We'll have to work on that. A young man needs to speak for himself."

Quiet. There it was again. Who gave these people authority to define a relative term? Who gave them authority to give it a positive or negative value? No one did. They just took it upon themselves to judge and soon he would be judged for everything else and the noose tightened still.

"A bit intimidating, isn't it?" Wes said as he handed him the key to his dorm after they had stepped inside the final stop on the tour. Wes' tie was tied around his neck properly and he was wearing the blazer identical to the one Blaine had draped over his arm. He certainly looked more proper than the other boys but it was a little too militaristic to be comforting. "Don't sweat it, you'll love it in no time."

If only time could run as fast as his head.

He sat on the small bed as Wes rattled off some of the dorm rules: all visitors must sign in, no weapons of any kind… The squeak of the bed springs capture more of his attention and he cringed knowing they would make it even harder to fall asleep.

He shut the door to the room as Wes headed back to class. He needed that physical barrier because time seemed to tick ever slowly towards… Feeling at home here? Feeling safe here? Feeling safe anywhere? He didn't really know and that in and of itself was probably his biggest hurdle Whatever time was supposed to give him though, his legs were itching to make up for its lag and run as far away from here as possible.


	2. Chapter 2

**#2. The Test**

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"White chocolate macchiato or French vanilla latte?" asked a foggy voice.

"Do you think it matters? The boy just needs caffeine. And quickly. The form doesn't matter."

The second voice was dampened too but Blaine could still distinguish them from each other. He could also the insistent jabs to his shoulder but for a reason that seemed neither here nor there, he didn't seem to care.

"Aww, leave the poor kid alone," came yet another voice.

"Entrance test, Wes. Monday. No time for sleep. Only caffeine and quadratic equations."

Entrance test! Blaine shot up suddenly at its mention, falling suddenly and harshly from his much needed nap back to reality. He blinked at the bright fluorescent lights and tried to orient himself. Butt numbing plastic chair, table scattered with papers and highlighters. Stacks of books. Lots of books. Right, library. He scrunched his nose at the tickle of a piece of paper being pulled from his cheek. Right, math notes. Entrance test in three days.

"Jeeze man," Nick said holding the page of notes, eyebrows raised, mouth a gape with horror. "Caffeine, stat."

"On it." Jeff plopped down his books and headed briskly for the door.

Blaine glanced briefly across the room where Wes seemed to be straining to stifle a laugh as he dug out his own work. He was glad someone was finding his misery entertaining. If his days at Dalton were numbered at least he'd have brought some joy to the mahogany halls. They say that's helpful, right? That providing joy can bring it back around to you. Maybe that only works if you get to hang around your newly created joyful company though and in that case he was probably no better off than when he started at Dalton a month ago.

It was cruel in a way and that thought had been growing ever bigger in Blaine's mind since his meeting with the headmaster two weeks ago where he'd first learned of the exam. He supposed his parents might have mentioned it when he was in the hospital but that was beside the point. Wes had been right, he'd fallen in love with Dalton. He struggled through most of his classes but he loved that he was never alone in the library. Academic prowess seemed to be the top priority for every students, a vast and pleasant departure from his old school. And where else would he find friends that would buy him coffee and invest themselves into his exam possibly even further than him? In fact, the only worthwhile thing he had learned at his old school was that straight boys would never be allies. That however, no longer seemed to be the case as Jeff bounded back in balancing four disposable cups with his two hands, elbow, and chin.

"London Fog for Nicky. Two tea bags. I know. I remembered. Drip for me, three creams. White chocolate macchiato with extra whip and an extra shot for our zombie on death row," he rattled off, handing out the drinks.

"Zombies are already-"

"Don't start with me, Nicky. I heard it as I said it," Jeff sighed, detouring from his seat across the library. "And of course, I would never forget about Wesley, our fearless Warbler leader. Mocha cappuccino."

Blaine watched captivated as Wes lifted an eyebrow but took his drink. "Warbler council does not accept bribes, Jeffery."

"Ahh, and yet you just did."

"Not a bribe if you don't get the solo."

"Well if you change your mind you know where to find me." And as if three tables over was too hard to navigate, Jeff proceeded to perform some strange pointing dance with his index fingers.

Blaine caught Wes' eye and a small part of him wanted to wholly deny knowing his table mates but he instead found himself pulling out the chair next to his for Wes to join if he ever did feel the need to tweak the Warbler set list. Hearing Nick and Jeff talk about show choir constantly had begun to stir something in Blaine. He knew he'd missed auditions for that season but maybe he could try his hand at bribing. Mocha cappuccino wasn't hard to remember.

"How are those quadratic equations coming, Anderson?"

Right, test first. No sense risking extortion charges if he couldn't even meet the IQ requirements. "Parabollically," he answered. Wes just rolled his eyes and turned back to his own work. Blaine took his queue and did the same.

His resolve faded quickly though, before his coffee even had a chance to go cold. It was just too frustrating because this wasn't even an IQ test. It was… he didn't even know what. Cruel and unusual punishment came to mind though. Because he could do it. He could learn the material there was just too much of it. Despite what Nick had said, it wasn't just quadratic equations after all. It was probability, mole hills, electron configurations, two dimensional acceleration, mitochondria, Gulf wars, World Wars, Passé Composé, Imparfait, semi colons, and Hamlet too. The list just got longer and longer and as Nick and Jeff tried to help, they just added to it because apparently sig figs and unit conversions are important to mole hill calculations. Come Monday, he had no hope of passing. No one from a public system did. So why would they have opened their oak doors to him in the first place? Let him begin to build a new life simply to rip it away. It was like someone had tossed him a life raft and after he struggling to climb on, tired and weak, he discovered it had been punctured. Was a semester's tuition really worth toying with someone like that? Why did they get the power to decide so? Sometimes it seemed that everybody had the power over him. Someone decided who was allowed to take who to a dance. Someone else decided that teasing would never amount to anything serious. Someone else decided this would be his new school and someone else would decide if he was smart and if he could stay.

Under the table, Blaine's knee bounced, the caffeine and sugar coursing through his veins, encouraging him to finally take that power away from everyone else, into his own hands, and run straight for the door.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Alright so this one may be a bit of a stretch (although the last one probably was too considering that was all head-canon). Oh well, hope you like it and Happy Easter!**

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#3. Transfer

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"I'll see you soon," Kurt said hopping out of the car with a hint of a mischievous smile hidden behind his coffee cup. A summer of those smiles had been a great test to Blaine's will power and dapper reputation.

"Promise," Blaine answered. He sat and waited until Kurt had walked across the parking lot and had disappeared into the high school because although the start of the school year was offering his raging hormones some relief, Blaine wasn't quite ready to give up all his time with Kurt just yet.

He took a sip from his own cup of coffee before pulling out of the parking lot, a sixteen year olds liquid courage. The knot in the tie around his neck seemed to slip tighter as he merged onto the highway. He didn't really know why he'd worn it. To keep up the element of surprise he supposed. Now it just seemed silly, dumb even. If he had told Kurt, he could have garnered his advice and support. Keeping it a surprise was supposed to keep himself free to make a decision that was entirely his own though. If he'd even hinted at the idea Kurt would have yanked him by the tie into the desk next to him before he could even finish the sentence and changing his mind would have been impossible. Regret would be imminent on both their ends and so no, the decision had to be made on his own, for both their sakes. But that didn't change the fact that he really, really, could use some of that courage that Kurt seemed to embody despite not always seeing it.

As he drove towards Westerville, passing the exit for his parent's house, he knew he was driving home only to bid it goodbye. Or at least, what had been his home for the past two years. Dalton couldn't be forever. He'd have to graduate at some point and he needed to find a way to live again beyond the oak doors and the blazer. He needed to be able to take off that armor and Blaine couldn't think of a better way to try than to do so by Kurt's side.

His parents didn't seem to care too much and the paper work was easy enough to figure out. So all that was left was to tell his friends. His friends who had invited him to a movie sleepover in their dorm his first weekend so he wouldn't feel so alone, who kept him caffeinated and motivated through his entrance test studying, and who went to bat for him with the almighty Wes and his Warbler council. He'd have to say goodbye to Wes too, and David and Thad, who'd broken sacred Warbler tradition for him. Twice. Because they let Kurt join mid-season as well. They, and all the Warblers, had believed in him enough to make him their lead in a time when he wasn't sure of anything.

A shiver ran up his back and his arm reached out to turn up the heat seemingly on its own. Blaine knew it wasn't the chill of the early dewy September hours though, the sun still low, rising along the highway behind him. It was his navy blazer with red piping and how it hugged his shoulders just so, never pulling, keeping him safe while making him strong and a part of something bigger, and how he'd have to take it off and leave it behind.

Blaine eased on the breaks as the Westchester exit approached. Instead of watching the road ahead and how it veered to the right, away from the highway, he fixated on the cars in the next lane over. They whizzed by, fast and free, westwards. All he had to do was throw on his blinker and he could go with them. He could go all the way to LA and live with Cooper, blazer still snug around him. He didn't want to run though, not really. He just wanted a way to move forward without saying goodbye. The closer he got to the school, as the houses got bigger and the trees lining the streets denser and greener, the more impossible the task seemed. If he walked into that building, he would never be able to walk back out. It'd be easier to just turn around and never see Dalton again.


	4. Chapter 4

**#4. Slushy**

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The house was quiet. It usually was. Quiet, in the real silent definition of the word but also in the hollow feeling, the void that existed between him and his parents. It wasn't all their fault and Blaine knew that. They tried and he if let them than maybe they would learn and would become better at it but he never let them cross that bridge. Their pity was just too much. Children just weren't supposed to feel less than their parents. They were supposed to be smarter, better adapted, stronger. His dad was never beat up in high school though. His dad was never hospitalized after some stupid prank and Blaine just couldn't deal with being a loose bolt on evolution's railway.

Kurt could cross the bridge still. He made it not so quiet. He'd come by every afternoon after school and his simple presence brought Blaine back from the deserted island he'd been cast away to and for those few hours it was almost as if none of it had never happened.

Sometimes when Kurt was there he was glad it had happened though. Apparently you didn't need a whole bucket of icy water dumped on your head for a so called reality check. An industry standard 'medium' with a side of sugar and cancerous food colouring would due. The rock salt was just an added bonus. The message was received long before Blaine dove in front of Kurt. Just seeing the cup being passed into Sebastian's hand was enough. And as much as Blaine loathed his assailant and his accomplices, he loathed himself more. For months Kurt had stood at his side and put on a scathing sneer. He had had to rebuild those walls, that armor, that they'd worked tirelessly together for the past year to take down.

And it was no wonder he had done so. Countless times Kurt had voiced his concerns about Sebastian but Blaine had ignored them. He let his own jealousy over the way everyone flocked to Finn as the leading man boom so loudly that it drowned out the only voice that was truly on his side, the only voice that mattered. Kurt was right. Sebastian didn't care about him. He just liked watching others squirm at his command. Showering Blaine with praise after months of Finn's scorn made him blush more than he was willing to admit. It made Kurt seethe and Sebastian wanted nothing more than to see him erupt, sending Blaine into his arms only so he could discard him. He had come close too. The simple fact that Blaine could feel the walls between himself and Kurt proved that. They were still low though, not tall enough yet to separate them so completely that their relationship would have mimicked what he had with his parents. If he had anything to be thankful for these days, it was this.

He still kicked himself though. It was just all so obvious. So obvious that he hadn't simply not noticed, he had had to actively avoid the signs. Why though? He'd suffered plenty of animosity before. Maybe it was different because all last year he had considered Finn a friend. Maybe it cut deeper or in a different place, a fresh place that hadn't already hardened over with scar tissue because this time, it wasn't a gay thing. It was something else. It had never been something else before.

But maybe it was the navy blazer with red piping that Sebastian wore around his shoulders. Last time, Dalton had welcomed him with open arms. Dalton was safe. Dalton was home. He left so he could begin finding carving out those comforts elsewhere but if he could ignore Sebastian's snide remarks about the boy he loved, than he hadn't gotten very far.

He was there now though. A trip to the hospital and a diagnosis threatening permanent blindness would do that.

Blaine clenched his fists around his comforter. Sitting still in the deafening quiet was becoming unbearable. He wanted to scream out into the night. He needed to. He wanted to scream so loud that the boys he had once called friends would be jolted out of their peaceful slumber in their dorms. He wanted their eardrums to bleed like his eye had. Mostly though, Blaine wanted to tear the blazers from their backs. How dare they call themselves Warblers? How dare they call themselves Dalton boys and dawn the first symbol of true tolerance and companionship Blaine had ever known? They had no right when they could so easily turn their backs on one of their own. Two of their own. Kurt had been a Warbler too so much so that they knew that the slushy would sting the most. If it had hit its intended target that night, the rock salt wouldn't have been necessary. And that sheer cruelty was what kept Blaine up at night. They weren't his friends. They weren't his Warblers. It wasn't his Dalton anymore and he would gladly watch whatever this knew thing was burn to the ground before they could defile it any further.


	5. Chapter 5

**#5. Drop Out**

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Time was another one of those relative things. Subway rides to school in the morning were always too short but coming home in the afternoon, coming home to Kurt, well those had always been too long. While he was living them, his early teen years had seemed to drag on for a hellish eternity but by the time he graduated high school, Kurt at his side and New York and NYADA in front of him, those early years seemed to flash by in the most insignificant types of seconds. No matter how he looked at _that_ year though, it seemed to go too fast. He was there and happy and thriving and then in one conversation, that all changed and suddenly he wasn't. He fell and it all happened so fast that there was no time to reach out for something to grab and hold onto.

He had never fallen that fast before. When high school had been bad he'd still been able to hold onto his spot on the honor role. He'd never failed a test, let alone flunk out completely. High school was easier granted and maybe if he'd been in third year and well past the freshman learning curve, he would have been able to pull through. He didn't know if the fact was comforting or just an added depressant. He hated that someone, even Kurt, could derail his life so violently. Because it wasn't just his relationship status that Kurt obliterated in one night, with one word, it was his education and future career too. But it wasn't Kurt really. It was him. He had allowed himself to become so attached, so achingly in love that his entire world crumbled when that person decided that he no longer felt the same. If there was even a chance to think that maybe a year or two down the line he wouldn't've been so obliterated, he could pretend that his entire sense of self wasn't wrapped around Kurt tighter than his jeans. Pretend was the key word though and nothing good ever came from what if games.

Sunday mornings spent in bed pouring over what if he had said this or done this instead of rehearsing monologues quickly became Monday mornings in bed thinking about what the wedding could've been and what stage of planning they would have been at instead of in class. Afternoons in the library became afternoons in his room, curtains drawn, books forgotten still hidden away in his book bag. He would sometimes just stare at the untouched pillow that lay beside his on the bed. Because slipping grades and academic probation didn't matter anymore, all Blaine cared about was Kurt and that he no longer mattered to him.

Blaine had never admitted defeat before. Dalton was forced upon him by his parents and the prep school was more of a stepping stone than anything back then. A plane ride back to a fly over state was not.

Therapy had been okay at first. It had given him a reason to get out of the house. He even pulled out his old bow tie rotation schedule. And talking helped. Blaine still wasn't convinced that she truly got it though. Most people didn't, that he could be so young and so completely heart broken. Everyone talked as if with time he could move on. Time was relative though and without Kurt, his world slowed to halt. No matter how many days or months passed, his head still seemed as jumbled and as frantic as the night it happened. Time just no longer ticked for him as it did for the rest of the world around him, leaving him stranded within his own head.

Now though, now Blaine knew his therapist's degree had truly been a waste of a university education. She had taken advantage of his weakened state and convinced him to take up a volunteer coaching job for the Warblers.

He felt sick as he drove the twenty five minutes from his parent's house to Dalton. That drive used to feel like an eternity after breaks that he was forced to spend at home and away from his friends and his dorm. He didn't have friends there anymore though. The ones that had bothered to apologize for the slushy incident had all graduated and moved onto to Ivy League schools. They were becoming doctors, lawyers, politicians, investment bankers. The kids who were left had all of them to look up to and would laugh in his face when they saw that he had come crawling back.

And as they laughed, Blaine would be forced to walk the halls he used to walk with Kurt, hand in hand, sit on the couch in the lounge where he used to lean slowly ever closer and closer to Kurt when they did their homework. He'd have to pass the staircase with no one to stop him and ask for directions, no one to look back at him with awe and wonder as he proclaimed his love.

It would feel so empty, a shell of its former self, haunted by happy ghosts, faded by time and greyed by the knowledge that they would never be alive again.

Why would anyone want to go back to that?


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: and here we go, last chapter. Probably should have put it all in one chapter but oh well. Thanks for sticking it out!  
-Katie**

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**#1. Fire**

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It was quiet again, both relatively and to any average outside observer. The almost black night sky was still successful here in Ohio at enticing people into their beds. It had taken him months to get used to the constant noise of New York but no time at all to sink back into his small town bed. That may have been because sleep was his only escape from loneliness but Blaine ignored that now that that loneliness was gone.

Tucked warm to his side, Kurt was his again, naked and limp, the moon light catching on the small droplets of sweat dappled across his skin. His breath was soft over Blaine's collar bone, its lazy, steady, rhythm radiating through his entire body and mind, blanketing him in a calm sort of quiet he hadn't found for far too long.

Blaine let his own breathing lull to sync with Kurt's. He allowed his eyes to slip close. Sometimes he never wanted to waste these moments with sleep now that he had them back. As the dark of the night approached its peak though, his will power always faltered and it was there, where the line between sleep and awake was blurred that his life could have easily been a dream.

Blaine's dreams never seemed to last long though until they morphed into a twisted nightmare. Never before though had it been so sudden. The ringing in his ear, the blinding light from his phone, for some reason that Blaine couldn't place in his drowsy mind seemed louder, brighter. His fingers fumbled for the right button, jabbing the screen more than should've been necessary. Kurt groaned beside him, burring further into his side but for some reason Blaine knew, even then that neither of them would be slipping back into the dream land again that night.

"Okay, okay," Kurt said about one of his hands in what Blaine supposed was supposed to be a calming measure. He turned around to his left, then his right, and back to his left again. The bedroom, complete with simply a double bed and a dresser had somehow become a maze. Where was his sweater? Where were his jeans? He'd only taken them off a couple hours ago. Kurt reached out to steady him, taking hold of his shoulder with one hand and his hoodie draw string with the other. "You need to breathe, B." Hoodie draw string? Right, he was already found the sweater and tugged it over his head. "We'll go, okay. We'll go. I'll drive and you're going to work on not having a panic attack," he said sweetly, bumping his fist against chest gently.

Blaine closed his eyes and ducked his head. He nodded and felt Kurt slip away from in front of him. The sound of his pounding heart was loud. He tries to drown that and the faint sound of his phone still ringing in his ears and the even fainter, and yet so ominously present, sound of crackling wood it out with some deep breaths.

The clinking sound of Kurt grabbing the keys off the dresser prompted him to finish getting dressed. When he opened his eyes again though, it was then that we realized which hoodie he had grabbed in his panic. The Dalton logo starred up at him upside down from where it was etched on the front on his chest. It was then that Blaine started to cry.

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Blaine's knee bounced and his fingers crawled on his seat belt. Usually Blaine loved driving late at night when he knew that by most of the world's standards he should be in bed. He loved the isolation of it, like this was an adventure for him and him alone. He wished someone could take his place on this one though. Some other kid who went to some other dilapidated public school. No one would miss some poorly funded, mould infested, health hazard. But Dalton was more than desks and chalkboards. Hell it was even more than its oak paneled halls and domed glass ceiling. Dalton was energy, a life force in and of itself. It taught more than simply differential calculus and postmodern European history, it taught its students how to work and live and create something bigger than themselves together. Because sometimes it's easier to step out on your own if you can step out within a group first.

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The smell hit them first. Hauntingly inviting like a campfire at first but as they got closer, it got stronger and made every cell in his body scream to turn around. At first Blaine couldn't see the smoke but then he ducked forward and looked upwards. The stars were only twinkling on the left. To the right, the sky was thick and black. About a block away came the light, the orange glow, so eerily associated with the warm Sun and wintery nights in, tucked up in front of the fire place. There was flashing red from all the fire trucks, their sirens cut like slow motion shots of season finale worth disaster episodes on TV. Everywhere there wasn't a truck, there were people. The boys, all in their pyjamas, some with laptops tucked under their arms, and they all stood still and fixated to flush out the shot even further. Then came the heat, like stepping out of air conditioned building in the hot Ohio summer but worse. And the crackling that had been playing in Blaine's ear all through the drive but there were louder, bigger crashes now too. Not just burning, but crumbling amongst the whoosh of the flames.

And finally, Kurt they had made it down the block and were pulling up adjacent to the all the chaos and there was nothing. There was no burning building. There was nothing to stand in front of and watch fall while playing all the happy memories it had given him over in his head.

Some of the boys in the Warblers began to crowd around him. Blaine could see in their lost faces that they were looking for answers, directions, something that would magically salvage what once was. But Blaine could only stand alongside them. In ashes, Dalton didn't have any magic left to offer.

He felt Kurt's hand slip into his own and he all of a sudden felt the need to run with him, away from the smoke and the loss and the desperate look in all those eyes pointed at him.

Kurt's other hand came to rest on his shoulder. "It'll be okay. We'll figure something out." he whispered.

For the first time since the smoke came into view, Blaine turned away from the chaos and towards Kurt, his blue eyes so contrasted against the orange flames and the glowing red embers.


End file.
